Museum as Toolbox

A cooperation project with Kunsthaus Graz, KUMU in Tallinn, MSU Zagreb, Museion Bozen/Bolzano and Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź
Co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union

Boring, complicated and only interesting for experts? Contemporary art is seen as exclusive and “hard to digest” – what’s it got to do with me? Young people aged between 15 and 25 in particular often find it difficult to see any connection between contemporary art and their own lives.

Translocal : Museum as Toolbox explores possibilities and paths of communication for museums. This project investigates jointly with young people how they would envisage a museum of contemporary art, what it has to do with their present-day life, what things could be tried out, how information could be presented and what channels you should use for this. How can museums become interactive toolboxes, which go beyond the aura of the object to make the location a socially relevant space in which themes are explored?

Five medium-sized European museums of modern and contemporary art have joined forces with the aim of working together with young people to design innovative tools. The purpose of these tools will be to open up the museum of the 21st century to its local surroundings. As many people as possible with a broad range of different interests and needs will try out this toolbox, actively investigate the museum and realise that the museum is a relevant place for them too! The objective is to evolve a communication culture that encourages participation because it has been designed and implemented by the target group itself, instead of simply being directed at them.

The project – working on education, curator and artist level – will perform a detailed research phase before developing, testing and measuring the impact of concrete communication tools for the target audiences by using different approaches: ICT based/Web 2.0, peer-to-peer, cooperation actions and programmes.

01 October 2015 – 30 September 2017

• Two-sided approach with target audiences to embed museum in local context
• Generating interactive instruments (Tools) for external and internal use
• Creation of platform for European museums and staff members
• Tool collection can be seen as a pilot for future activities

• Needs analysis (research, survey, good practices)
• Development and practical testing of communication tools for target audiences (Museum APP, youth groups, cooperation activities with local initiatives)
• Artists’ residencies and curator visits
• Symposium
• Travel exhibition
• Exhibition catalogue
• Museum as Toolbox documentation
• Website, Blog and social media profil
• Exploitation concept (incl. a network strategy) to directly integrate the outcomes into the European Translocal Network

Purpose of the planned market research was to find out the wording, the spoken language of the target group in context with (contemporary) art and to encourage the young participants to present their own image of a museum as a toolbox by using an integrative creative and qualitative research approach.

The first results were discussed during the interim project meeting in Berlin and presented to a wider public at the Museum as Toolbox Symposium in August 2016 in Tallinn.

The SUPER survey results can be downladed here.